The Fundamentalist professes: "I believe the Bible to be totally inspired of God, inerrant in
the original manuscripts." On the one hand, this is a statement of his belief,
while on the other hand it is the basis of his belief: the first because this is
said to be his conviction; the second, because the miraculous aspect of the
Bible's inerrancy convinces him that God is the author. However, the statement
cannot do either job. First, he believes that God ordered the writing of all the
Bible. This must include 1 Corinthians 7:25 where Paul writes without the
command of God - a contradiction. Second, the miraculous inerrancy of the Bible
is something he has never seen. Many Biblical errors are excused as being
copying errors. That is, the original manuscripts, which are lost forever, are
said, to be inerrant but not those manuscripts which we have today. The
statement (intended to serve as both an article of faith and the justification
for such faith) fails because it is not universally applied in the first usage
and it cites evidence which cannot be produced in the second usage.

Many of the verses in the Bible seem to contradict each other. However, these are often matters
that can be reconciled by better understanding of translation and context. This kind of
reconciliation is the subject of many Christian books and is a healthy process. But some have
deceived themselves into thinking that this means every Biblical contradiction is only apparent and
can be explained. Actually there is another category of contradictions which is not explainable by
consideration of translation or context. It is the existence of this type of discrepancy that has
caused the words "in the original manuscripts" to be added to any claim that the Bible is free of
error. These are the so-called copying mistakes (e.g. Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7). Here again the
believer in total Bible inspiration neglects to apply his belief universally. At Isaiah 40:8, the Bible
states that God's word stands forever - it does not get lost in the re-copying. If the Christian takes
this part of the Bible as inspired how can he admit that other portion have not stood till now, let
alone forever?

At this point the Christian redefines exactly what he means by God's word. He says that it is not
so much the individual words of the Bible, these were chosen by the human writers, but the
message which is God's word. So small statistical errors do not invalidate the Bible's totally divine
authority. Once more we have an answer which opposes a previous claim: it was the supposed
amazing accuracy of the individual words themselves that testified to the divine quality of the
Bible. Now these words are said to be only human efforts under a more vague "in breathing"
(inspiration) of God.